Tajik rebels strike in Kyrgyzstan

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, AUG. 11. Dozens of Islamic militants stormed into Kyrgyzstan from neighbouring Tajikistan on Friday, a week after another rebel group invaded Uzbekistan, Russian media reported today.

A spokesman for the Kyrgyz government told reporters that about 40 armed rebels crossed the Kyrgyz border from Tajikistan on Friday morning, attacking a border post in the mountainous Batken region and wounding two borderguards.

The spokesman said the rebels belonged to the opposition Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan led by the warlord Djuma Namangani, whose men had invaded Uzbekistan about 10 days ago.

A year ago, several hundred militants from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan took hostage four Japanese geologists in the same region of Kyrgyzstan and held them for several months until the Japanese government reportedly paid a $4-million ransom. This time the rebels are believed to be pushing for the Fergana valley in Uzbekistan, where they want to set up an Islamic state.

Security forces in the neighbouring Uzbekistan have been battling 70 to 100 well-armed fighters of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan since last week. The rebels crossed from Tajikistan and captured a strategic road on a 4,000-metre mountain pass. Uzbek military said the invaders, trained in

Afghanistan, were seeking to create a base to store weapons and food for further terrorist attacks on Uzbek territory and open a transit route for drugs and weapons.

The Uzbek authorities admitted their forces had suffered casualties in the fighting, but claimed the rebels had been surrounded and were being destroyed. Unofficial reports however said the rebels had cut the only road linking the Fergana Valley with the rest of Uzbekistan and were holding their ground. The rebels are armed with sniper rifles, night-vision goggles, grenade launchers and even Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. On Wednesday, they shot down an Uzbek military plane.

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, financed by Osama bin Laden, and extremist Wahhabi groupings, is said to be trying to exploit considerable discontent among impoverished ethnic Tajiks who make up a majority of population in the Fergana Valley. Analysts said the rebels were also trying to destabilise the situation in the region where the borders of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan converged and to pit the three Central Asian states against each other.

The Russian President, Mr. Vladimir Putin, spoke on telephone with the Uzbek President, Mr. Islam Karimov, offering Russian military aid in repulsing the aggression.

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